Return of the Chhote Nawab
Arun Roy

THEY are comparing him to fine wine — rich, full-bodied and maturing with age. He has lost the brash, impulsiveness of youth as he speaks now in slow, measured tones, much like his father, the illustrious Mansoor Ali Khan, former Nawab of Pataudi.

But that is not why people are talking about Saif Ali Khan. All of a sudden, Bollywood is awash with three films featuring him in key roles. The first off the block is Nikhil Advani’s Kal Ho Naa Ho, a love triangle in which he is pitted against Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta.

Next in line is J.P. Dutta’s war epic, Line of Control (LoC) in which he is cast as a brave Army officer along with the Hindi cinema’s biggest stars. And in the Ramgopal Varma-produced Ek Hasina Thi, Saif plays a charming con man, Karan Rathod.

"I am in fashion now," says the 33-year-old actor Bollywood, called Chhote Nawab in deference to his royal lineage. "There isn’t anything false in the roles I am playing. I would be terribly disappointed if I do not get serious recognition for my current work."

The work includes the films he is doing, which includes the much-hyped Hum Tum, which director Kunal Kohli describes as a "love story in the genre of Annie Hall and When Harry Meets Sally". The film is almost entirely being shot in Europe.

In Aparna Sen’s Gulel — a film about the relationship between a hitman and his target — Saif plays a rich Parsi alcoholic. Earlier in the year, he came up with a miniscule, but much appreciated performance as a photographer who turns psychotic in Darna Mana Hai.

"Saif has become someone like Johnny Depp or John Cusack," observes Farhan Akhtar, the director of his last big hit, Dil Chahta Hai. "He was trapped in a mainstream environment, but today, he has the courage to experiment more. He is obviously surer of himself and knows exactly what to do."

The effort to push the envelope is very clear. Today, he is more concerned about the craft of acting than the peripherals of stardom. for instance, in Ek Hasina Thi, he worked hard on the looks and posture of the character he plays and even devised stunts and wrote a few dialogues.

"Each time I do a shot, I imagine that my colleagues are watching and I ask myself, ‘Will they respect me for this work?’ That itself is enough motivation for me to go that extra mile. Earlier, I was pretty bad. I was headstrong and arrogant and liked to walk on the wild side!"

It has taken Saif a decade and 50-odd films to realise what went wrong for him. He says that his mother, (yesteryear heroine Sharmila Tagore) had warned him against being a brat if he had to make a career in films. "But at the age of 21, what do you do? You have all kinds of ideas about yourself."

Predictably, he was thrown out of the sets of Rahul Rawail’s Bekhudi because of his bad behaviour. Umesh Mehra almost did not sign him on for Aashiq Awara, because his marriage to Amrita Singh had made headlines and debutant heroes were not supposed to be married.

Yash Chopra signed him for Parampara only after Amrita stood guarantee for him. He had such a bad reputation that everybody began referring to him as a freak. "Either he was mature at 21 or I was retarded at 26," says Amrita, reflecting on those "wild days" of their courtship.

Friends, who had not given them even a year for their marriage to last, are now all praise for the way they have pulled through in these 12 years. They have two children — a two-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter — with Amrita playing the boss at home.

Saif however, displays occasional flashes of his wild ways. "I have never lived this long at one place," he complains. "I have never worked this long in one field or stayed this long in relationship. Something must be terribly wrong with me!" MF

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